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POW memories rarely
shared Chemical engineer Kuhman opened up in his 2003 interview
Elyria - Clement Kuhman squirreled away remnants from his
prisoner-of-war days, stashed them in a peanut box and tried to
forget. The retired chemical engineer, who died Jan. 27 at age
82, rarely spoke about his wartime experiences until his later
years. His seven children grew up aware of the little box and
mystified by its contents.
"He had a tin peanut box full of little pieces of paper [the POWs]
could scribble recipes on," his son Tim said. "He had this wooden
spoon and a makeshift wooden knife. It wasn't until we were all out
of the house and he picked up with Barbed Wire Buckeyes" that the
family learned more.
Kuhman shared more about that chapter of his life in a 2003
interview for a Library of Congress oral-history project called
"Experiencing War."
He would have used the wooden spoon to eat strange soup made of
unknown ingredients out of his helmet when he first arrived at
Stalag IX-B in Bad Orb, Germany.
"I understand it was made from sugar beet tops," Kuhman said in the
interview. "It was something we hadn't had before."
He implied that Russian cooks, who prepared the nasty concoction,
used more than beets.
"When we first got there, there were dogs in the camp," he said.
"They somehow disappeared."
Kuhman used a piece of bed slat to cut bread, which he believed was
made with sawdust instead of flour. Unable to fill their stomachs,
he and his comrades tried to satisfy their hunger with memories of
their mothers" favorite recipes.
"Most of the time, we sat around and talked. Not about women. About
food," he said.
He initially seemed headed for an easy stint in the Army. After
abbreviated basic training, he entered an accelerated-study program
in engineering at the University of Alabama.
But early in 1944, the Army needed more infantrymen and pulled the
plug on the program. Most of the would-be engineers were sent to
Camp Atterbury in Indiana for training with the 106th
Infantry Division.
Ironically, Camp Atterbury also housed German and Italian prisoners
of war, who were treated to field trips outside the camp and
sometimes taken by escorts to visit American relatives.
By mid-December, Kuhman was driving a jeep in a convoy from Rouen,
France, to St. Vith, Belgium. A few days later, the Germans launched
a surprising final offensive, which became known as the Battle of
the Bulge. They captured the company of inexperienced soldiers,
forced them to march for a couple of days, then loaded them onto
boxcars for the long ride to the POW camp.
Several hundred prisoners, who thought the war would be over by
Christmas, were packed in a barracks with no heat, no windows and a
hole in the floor that served as the only toilet.
"People got sick, pneumonia, whatever, and died," Kuhman said. "We
were losing three or four a week. We didn't get out of there until
April."
After the war, he returned to Weirton, W.Va., and took a job in a
steel mill. In 1946, he enrolled at Case School of Applied Science
in Cleveland. He finished his schooling at Fenn College, received a
degree in chemical engineering in 1952 and began working at Harshaw
Chemical Co. in Cleveland. He later transferred to the Elyria plant.
Whenever co-workers talked about war, Kuhman would simply say, "I
was one of the first American soldiers to cross the Rhine, but it
was on a prison train."
He was more comfortable discussing the war with fellow members of
the American Ex-Prisoners of War.
"I guess that's because we understand each other," said Doc Unger, a
former POW. "We really laugh a lot of times about the terrible
things that happen. He was good at getting people to talk. The
therapeutic value has been tremendous for the guys that have been
active with us in our organization."
The more Kuhman talked about the things he wanted to forget, the
easier it became.
"Since 1990 or so, he was pretty much an open book, telling you what
he thinks, trying to make people laugh," his son said. "He wanted
people to enjoy life like he was."
Clement Kuhman
visited Camp Atterbury in Indiana seven years ago and posed in front
of a wall commemorating the divisions that the camp housed. Kuhman
was a member of the 106th Infantry Division, "the Golden Lions."
Caption/Lead: Elyria - Clement Kuhman squirreled away remnants from
his prisoner-of-war days, stashed them in a peanut box and tried to
forget. The retired chemical engineer, who died Jan. 27 at age
82, rarely spoke about his wartime experiences until his later
years. His seven children grew up aware of the little box and
mystified by its contents. Alana
Baranick, Cleveland
Plain Dealer - Cleveland,OH,USA |