Death March Across Germany

World War II prisoner of war Joe Koenig of Cedar Rapids recalls the 500-mile march in the dead of winter across northern Germany in 1945 in my Ramblin' column in today's Gazette. It was a gruesome march through deep snow and sometimes blizzard conditions with little food, threats of all sorts of diseases and guards who could be brutal even though they suffered nearly as much as the prisoners. 

If you want to read more about the death march across Germany, check out this link: http://www.b24.net/pow/march.htm

It's something Joe doesn't talk a lot about, although time has healed some of the wounds. Being a prisoner at Stalag VI, he told me, certainly wasn't anything like the Stalag 17 of "Hogan's Heroes" television fame.

Joe talked about everything from being packed in a ship's hull like sardines, being poked by bayonets or jabbed with rifle butts, scrounging any little bit of food because even clean water was scarce.

Finally, after more than a year as a prisoner and the long 52-day march, Joe was liberated by the English Second Army on April 16, 1945. He was so happy he cried.

After three weeks in the hospital to restore his health, Joe wound up in London on V-E Day, May 8, 1945, when the war in Europe was over.

"We stood outside Buckingham Palace," he recalls, "to see the King of England, his daughter, Queen Elizabeth, Margaret and Winston Churchhill."

By May 29, Joe's ship arrived in New York and three or four days later he was back home in Halbur, Iowa (Carroll County), reunited with his family and wife-to-be, Lucille. They married after he got a 30-day extension of his leave before he had to return to Army duty in the United States so he could be honorably discharged.

Among the awards given to Joe, according to his daughter, Becky Picard of Cedar Rapids, were the Purple Heart, the Air Medal, the Good Conduct Medal, the POW and World War II Victory Medal . . . but they don't compare to the life he was given.

In 1951 Joe began a 17-year stint operating the Sinclair service station at 1601 Ellis Blvd. NW, in Cedar Rapids with brother-in-law Floyd Noel. He later became an insurance agent for Mutual of Omaha. And Joe, 85, and Lucille, 87, will celebrate their 63rd wedding anniversary this year.