Comments by
John Schaffner, 106th INF DIV
on the Red Cross POW Bulletins
Using hindsight I would agree that these stories were spread to, more or less, calm the nerves of those families that had word of their loved ones being POW. During the first year or two of POW life, 1941-42, perhaps the Red Cross packages were distributed. Now we know what bad shape Germany was in during the last  couple of years, squeezed on both sides and the middle.

Food was scarce. If you and your German family were starving and a Red Cross package came close enough to grab, what would you do? Surely your enemy would be the last to get anything. We have read enough accounts from those who were there to conclude that the longer it went the less the POWs got.

My buddies, Walt Snyder and Bernard Strohmier both came home on stretchers weighing about (or less than) 100 pounds. They were not the only ones.

These items are interesting from an historical view and I think we should include them but with a certain disclaimer. Back then if donators to the Red Cross ever got wind that their money was winding up in the belly of the enemy the program might have dried up and things would have gotten worse.

Probably political implications as well with anti-war groups. Lots went on I was never aware of.