My sole purpose in life was to scurry through the earth much like my animal counterpart. It was a drab existence, hours would go by where I wouldn't set eyes on the yellow orb above which gave life to all manner of life but mercifully at the end of my day I would spring forth from the earth like a newly budding plant. Though, all in all, it could have been worse. There were those task it was to remove the bodies of the cleverly named moles who due to some manner of underground accident gave their lives to the earth and also for the rest of us. I don't know what made me volunteer for this particular detail, I guess it was either this or tunneling up towards the latrine, our route mercifully was nowhere near it .It was perhaps a bit more daring than I would have liked being directly under the guardhouse, hopefully they would have chalked all the noise up to the occasional rat or prisoner of war.

It was tough going at first but considering what we had to work with we did old Uncle Sam proud, we gave it the ole army try, a friend of mine one Private Pritchard had succumbed to prison life and as per his instructions his belongings were shared among the rest of us. As it turned out I got his Swiss army knife, how he kept it a secret from our lovely hosts I'll never know. I guess maybe because it was from Switzerland and as we all know they are known for their neutrality, I remembered that much from history class.

There was also a half-eaten candy bar, a little piece of memorabilia from the outside, I was the envy of the barracks, who would have ever thought something that could be so easily obtained on the outside could become such a hot item but then again we weren't on the outside anymore. Perhaps I am getting ahead of myself, I should introduce myself, my name was Williams. I say was because in here names don't matter, you weren't who you were on the outside. In here I was just another prisoner of war with a job to do, a job I shared with 2000 other men, it was the duty of every prisoner of war, put simply to escape but you know the old saying easier said than done. I was captured while taking a shit, should have know better than to take a dump with my back turned, but the Germans were kind enough to let me finish. Personally I think the krauts didn't want to touch a guy who had his pants around his ankles, I can't blame them really, my ass is definitely not a sight for sore eyes an even more so when its covered in good ole boy Texas shit. If I wasn't about to be thrown into a German POW camp I might have found the sight of three German soldiers putting on their gas masks extremely funny, it had seemed my German counterparts thought I had released some deadly gas into the air and I suppose in a manner of speaking I did. In hindsight I suppose I should have run away but then my fatigues were around my ankles.

back to Rori's page