A PRISONER THINKS

By Bill Mann, Stalag IX-B

28th Division, 110th Infantry, HQ Co.

To you who say, “Does it all seem now

As if it were a dream somehow?”

I’ll answer your query in words that tell

Of the life I led in a place called Hell.

Around me lay the broken hulks

Of men whose once tremendous bulk

Had forced the enemy to his knees.

How all they had were cries and pleas.

Cries for food, and pleas for drink,

My God that awful place did stink

Of rotting carcasses on the floor,

Of men who couldn’t make the door.

1~nd there we were a broken lot

Of soldiers who had been forgot.

Too weak to think; to weak to work

In huddled heaps we lay with dirt.

But every now and then someone

Would mention home and love and fun.

And in our hearts so full of strife

We’d think of loved ones, child and wife.

We’d pray to God way up above

To save us for the ones we love.

To let us see that land once more,

To set our foot on freedom’s shore.

This perpetual hope, this will to live,

To return again, to ourselves to give

The things that everyone there gets,

The things you find on heaven’s steps.

1 may forget that terrible hell,

And the things too horrible to tell

But in my heart there will always stay

The thoughts I’ve told to you today.

Of prayers and never ending hope, Of men with which we couldn’t cope, And the fact we had the will to fight Off death -- I’m home,

Thank God.